Tag Archives:
snake

In an eat or be eaten world, the survival of the fittest can come down to who the most physically able is. Today’s paper investigated the athletic ability of sidewinder rattlesnakes relative to their kangaroo rat prey. (Image Credit: Tigerhawkvok, CC BY-SA 3.0).

The Crux

In nature, many animals are part of the predator-prey cycle. One animal is subject to being eaten by the other, and must escape in order to avoid this fate. Despite what you may have seen on a variety of amazing nature documentaries, most predator-prey interactions don’t involve some flashy takedown and subsequent meal for the predator. Predators usually fail far more often than they succeed, with one of the most successful animals on the planet (the killer whale) only succeeding HALF of the time.

These interactions between predators and their prey depend on two things: the predator’s physical attack ability/performance and the prey’s escape ability. Basically, who is more athletic? There are many different ways that predators try and take down their prey, but the authors of today’s paper wanted to know what the key aspects of the predator-prey interaction are, and which of them is most important for each participant.Read more

We examine the ecology of the BGWMs of 2011’s Attack the Block. Sexual ecology has never been more furry. Or glow-in-the-dark. Actually sexual ecology can get pretty furry. Also we have two fights this week.

The Crux

Plants depend on outside forces to disperse their seeds away from the parent plant, and the most common way is via a process called zoochory, where animals spread the seeds. This can be due to seeds being stuck onto the fur of an animal, animals taking and storing the seeds in a different location, or when an animal eats the fruit and later defecates the seeds.

One indirect way in which seeds are dispersed is when a predator, such as a coyote, raptor, or bobcat, consumes an animal (like a mouse) that had seeds in its stomach or cheek pouches. Rattlesnakes commonly consume small rodents that carry seeds in cheek pouches, and though these snakes are known to eat these seed-carrying animals, their own role in seed dispersal remains largely unknown. In order to learn more, the researchers in this study dissected museum specimens to search for secondarily-consumed seeds.